When we finally decided to go places

The stylishly dressed couple approached the boarding agent at Los Angeles International Airport with a predictable request:

“Two tickets to Paris, please.”

“Of course,” the agent replied.

“Oh, and could we get the Pueblo layover?”

“Certainly,” the agent responded, without batting an eyelash. “Everyone these days wants to hub through there, and why not? It’s located in the center of the known universe and has every convenience. Most of all, it’s so darned fun!”

She stamped their boarding passes and moved on to the next customers.

Pueblo? You’re asking yourself. How did that happen?

Roll back to 2014, when it seemed like Pueblo was about to be cut off from the modern transportation grid.

Commuter plane service had been eliminated at Pueblo Memorial Airport. Lawmakers were struggling to restore passenger rail service to Pueblo. And construction projects had turned the road system into a giant quagmire.

“We gotta do something!” the Powers What Be heard during their meeting in the back room at the antique car show. “But what?”

Then, came a brainstorm. Actually, it was a brain shower, because the drought had been so bad. A trickle of ideas, if you will.

“What if we tied the weed thing into the transportation thing?” a small voice in the back of the back room said. “Like a smoking car on the Amtrak train?”

“That’s so screwy it might work,” a bolder voice suggested. “After all, all of the marijuana tourists can’t take it with them on the planes. And we’re already approaching crisis stages in providing enough hotel rooms.”

So, a rider — the legislative kind, not a hobo — was attached to the Amtrak bill to provide a state-funded smoking (pot only) car to the train when it entered at Trinidad and to remove it at Lamar and send it back the other way. Lawmakers shrugged, thinking it might work, and passed the bill.

That was only the first step.

Next came the Zephyr Zeppelin, a toker-friendly dirigible that ferried passengers from Pueblo to Denver International Airport.

That led to the Weather Underground, a high-speed, wind-powered rail tunnel (complicated, but basically like a giant pea shooter) that allowed travelers even quicker access to DIA, especially during inclement weather.

Of course, not all of the ideas took hold. The Tom Sawyer Express was nothing more than a brief raft trip through the Downtown Whitewater Park. Attempts to write marijuana cruises into the revised recreation plan for Lake Pueblo failed after the feds balked.

And the Journey to the Center of Your Mind bike trail was just plain dangerous.

But there were enough activities in Pueblo to keep visitors amused. Once City Council reluctantly approved the City for Stoners initiative, the HARP tourism project finally took off.

The hotel building boom continued well into 2016. Just as it was appearing to wane, four airlines got into a bidding war to provide limited jet service to Pueblo.

Confused, the FAA granted all four of them franchises, and the resulting airport expansion created unprecedented economic growth.

Council purchased the Southern Delivery System from now-bankrupt Colorado Springs to fill the water requirements for the Airport Economic Zone.

A giant horseshoe siphon had to be installed, but that was just another complex detail in what had become a deluge — sprinkle, really, because of the drought — of ideas.

The local college and university received beaucoup endowments to develop a trained work force to staff all of the new industries locating to the Pueblo region as the renaissance bloomed.

It was the perfect storm — or rather, mid-afternoon downpour because of the drought.

So the travelers happily boarded their plane in Los Angeles, smiling at each other as the engines began to rumble.